“Believe it. But even if he hadn’t had an alibi, there wasn’t any evidence pointing his way.”
“Then why did he make you uneasy?”
“He was too forthcoming.”
Billy didn’t say anything, but he was disappointed. He was in the market for certainty, and Ozgard didn’t have any to sell.
Sensing that disappointment, the detective expanded on what he had said.
“He came to me before he was even on my scope. Fact is, he might never have been on my scope if he hadn’t come to me. He wanted so much to help. He talked and talked. He cared about her too much, like she was a beloved sister, but he had only known her a month.”
“You said she was exceptional at relationships, she embraced people, they bonded with her.”
204
“According to her best friends, she didn’t even know Zillis that well. Only casually.”
Reluctantly playing the devil’s advocate, Billy said, “He could have felt closer to her than she did to him. I mean, if she had that kind of magnetism, that appeal…”
“You would have had to see him, the way he was with me,” Ozgard said.
“It’s like he wanted me to wonder about him, to check him out and find the airtight alibi. And after I did, there was this smugness about him.”
Remarking on the quiet revulsion in Ozgard’s voice, Billy said, “You’re still hot.”
“I am hot. Zillis—he’s coming back to me, the way he was. For a while, before he finally faded away, he kept trying to help, calling up, dropping by, offering ideas, and you had this feeling it was all mockery, he was just performing.”
“Performing. I have a feeling like that, too,” Billy said, “but I really need more.”
“He’s a prick. That doesn’t mean he’s anything worse, but he is a selfsatisfied prick. The little prick even started acting like we were pals, him and me. Potential suspects, they just never do that. It’s not natural. Hell, you know. But he had this easy, jokey way about him.”
“ ‘How’re they hangin’, Kemosabe.’”
“Shit, does he still say that?” Ozgard asked.
“He still does.”
“He’s a prick. He covered it with this goofy charm, but he’s a prick, all right.”
“So he was all over you, and then he just faded away.”
“The whole investigation faded away. Judi was gone like she’d never existed. Zillis dropped out of school at the end of that year, his sophomore year. I never saw him again.”
“Well, he’s here now,” Billy said.
“I wonder where he’s been in between.”
“Maybe we’ll find out.”
“I hope you find out.”
“I’ll be back to you,” Billy said.
205
“Any hour on this one, anytime. You have tin in your blood, Deputy?”
Billy didn’t get it for a moment, and then he almost forgot who he was supposed to be, but he came back with the right answer: “Yeah. My dad was a cop. He was buried in his uniform.”
“My dad and my grandfather,” Ozgard said. “I’ve got so much tin in my blood it rattles in my veins, I don’t even need the badge for people to know what I am. But Judith Kesselman, she’s in my blood as bad as the tin. I want her to be at rest with some respect, not just… not just dumped somewhere. Christ knows, there’s not much justice, but there has to be some in this case.”
After hanging up, Billy could not for a moment move from the edge of the bed. He sat staring at Lanny, and Lanny seemed to stare at him. Ramsey Ozgard was in life, all the way in the tides, swimming, not treading carefully along the shore. Immersed in the life of his community, committed to it.
Billy had heard the detective’s commitment coming down the line from Denver, as fresh to the senses as if the two of them had been in the same room. Hearing it, Billy had been stung by the realization of how complete his own withdrawal had been. And how dangerous.
Barbara had begun to reach him; then vichyssoise. Life packed a clever one-two punch: cruelty and absurdity.
He was in the tides now, but not by choice. Events had thrown him in deep, swift water.
The weight of twenty years of guarded emotions, of studied avoidance, of defensive reclusiveness, encumbered him. Now he was trying to learn to swim again, but a riptide seemed to be sweeping him farther from any community, toward greater isolation.
206
As though he knew where he would be going, down the lava tube without benefit of mourners or memorial, Lanny didn’t want to be wrapped. The shooting had not taken place in this room, so no blood or brains stained the walls or furniture. Because he wanted Lanny to vanish in such a way that would engender the most uncertainty
